


The spaces between the stars

by Anonymous



Category: Philip Marlowe - Raymond Chandler
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 05:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13606686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Terry Lennox has had a couple of different names, and he doesn't recognize himself when he accidentally catches his reflection in the glass, but there is one constant in his life: Marlowe.





	The spaces between the stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skazka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skazka/gifts).



“Would you care to drive?”

I hold out the keys. I always offer, and you always want to refuse—the car, the last drink, my company—but you never do.

You turn from Laurel Canyon on to Mulholland, the Jowett Jupiter shaking a little as you shift gears, and we are racing past gold and lavender blooming wildly against the oaks and manzanitas. You relax into the curves, and accelerate neatly out of them with all the pleasure of a gambler finding a King next to a Queen.

I’d always liked you more than other people, but that was when I started to be afraid of what it could mean. Even in the joy of that distant spring, that road was always leading here.

Brighter colors, hotter air, yet I stay inside, writing to you.

I don’t remember our first meeting. I’d been drinking with Sylvia, leading her around the dance floor while she carelessly threw smiles over my shoulder, pleased at their effect on the weaker members of her set. After another drink, I discouraged those who were auditioning to be my replacement—a few more drinks, a celebration, and then I was waking up in an unfamiliar room. Fully dressed, wallet as empty as before, which meant I hadn’t agreed to anything unseemly while the gin was running the show. You were smoking and pretending you weren’t watching me.

“Where the hell am I?”

“The Biltmore.”

I tried to smile, and you looked surprised, as if you were used to your jokes passing without any kind of acknowledgment. You made me coffee and I wondered if you were going to ask me to stay.

I would’ve said yes.

We didn’t talk about Sylvia that night. Most people were willing to overlook the scar and the lack of background after discovering my connection to the one of the largest fortunes in the West, but you were angry. Poor Sylvia. You would’ve liked her if you’d met her. I know she would’ve liked you.

Sylvia Lennox. Forest Lawn covers her grave in roses on all of the major holidays, paid for by her sister, but no one ever visits.

Harlan Potter. Next to Sylvia now. Instead of grandchildren, there’s the Harlan Potter Center for the Performing Arts, the Harlan Potter wing at the county museum, and Harlan Potter Halls at several campuses of the University of California.

Linda Loring. Changed her name, and then changed it again, but you’d know more about that than I do.

Randy Starr. Senator from Nevada. He called me shortly after the election, and I congratulated him. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” he said. “You voted for me twice.”

I don’t remember much of the war. I’ve been told I did something heroic, but all I carry are my acts of cowardice, walking with me, staying in my bed at night. The London air was sharp with the smell of metal over the crumbling pavement, centuries of decay eroding the ground beneath our feet. Mendy was laughing to himself—he started the evening with a fiver, and finished with nearly two hundred pounds. He’d been playing with gentlemen, all bad luck and nerves, the public school sportsmanship manifesting as an eagerness to lose. Bombs were dropping on their city, not mine.

I never had a city, until I met you.

Mendy wanted jazz, and Randy wanted decent alcohol, but we knew we wouldn’t make it far in the blackout, so I guided them to Eileen’s flat. She was waiting for me; she said she’d wait forever. I repeated her lines, maybe I even meant it, at least a little. Eileen’s flatmates were all American girls, almost as pretty, but without the wildness. The girls made tea that went ignored as Randy filled the teacups with whiskey. Eileen put a dance record on the gramophone, Mendy and Randy pulled the girls up and spun them around the room. Eileen and I didn’t dance. We sat next to each other, she swung her stockinged legs over mine, the thrill of possession. We sat like that while the city burned around us, smoke seeping into the flat through the cracks in the walls and the rattling window frames, impossible for even the heavy curtains to keep out.

In the hospital, they told me that the whole street was taken out. Mendy, twirling his date against the ottoman, Eileen letting the needle drop, before turning to me, her eyes bright with an impossible future. Nothing was left.

I didn’t tell you any of this, and if I thought you were going to read my words, I wouldn’t be telling you now. I wanted to know your stories—how did you keep yourself clean in a dirty business in our dirty town.

“Marlowe,” I said. You took the glass from me, and it felt like hours before you returned.

“You never finished your story. Who did kill the chauffeur?”

“It was a long time ago,” you said.

A long time ago, that could be a decade, or it could be last week. I left the glass untouched and reached for you. We both knew this was why we were drinking in your sitting room and not in a dark corner at Cole’s or Victor’s. I kissed you, and you opened to me, kissing me back with a fierceness that was always a surprise.

We didn't make it to the bedroom, we never do, and I wondered why you are so afraid of tenderness.

You take the keys and drive as if all the devils and the LAPD were behind us, not stopping until the sky darkens. From Mulholland we see the new houses spreading across the old land: my house is ahead of us, and yours behind. The lights are coming on across the valley as I move closer to you, burying my face in your shoulder. You put your arm around me, touching my face. My good side, I think. We're together in a space that belongs to us and it feels like a promise. This is what you will remember on the day my words finally reach you.


End file.
